Windows 10 boot problems, pls help

digitalwanderer

digitalwanderer

wandering
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Help please. Power went out a couple of 3-4 times during some tornado stuff last night and it highlighted a problem I've put off dealing with too long.

I put an SSD in my wife's PC and transfered her windows 10 install to it using cloning software. It runs windows off the ssd, but the hdd is still in there and it takes 30+ minutes to reboot. If I remove the hdd it won't boot.

I don't wanna reinstall windows 10 as my wife doesn't keep a tidy PC and saving/transferring all the data will be a nightmare, is there a way to check my MBR/EFI to see what is going on?

Here's a screencap of her disk manager since that's where my googling lead me to start:

1721167759204.png1721167759204.png

I've never been able to figure this one out and it's been going on too long, where did I screw it up?
 
In Windows go to your file explorer and right click on you C: drive and go to properties. Click on tools tab and scan to check if any errors are there. It will inform you and might as to reboot if severe errors are found.


Other things you can do if you have some corrupt data on your HD that needs fixing. Either boot to the command line or open an elevated command prompt in Windows and issue the following as Administrator:

chkdsk c: /f /r /x

You can also run the following which will check and repair system related files for issues:
sfc /scannow

You should do a google search on the following commands to familarize with what the commands do.

You might be able to also use your Windows system restore to get back to a point prior to the power outage, though this should only restore system files to some point before the outage.
 
Which cloning software did you use? I use Acronis TrueImage for WD all the time on my drives, and it's normally just as simple as firing the software up, clicking the clone button, shutting down, removing the old drive, and making sure the BIOS/UEFI is set to boot from the new one.

Some BIOS/UEFIs can be a bit obtuse in these situations, and won't automatically add a new boot device to the boot order, even if the one and only one that was active previously was removed.

I'm assuming disk 0 (1TB) is the old HDD and Disk 1 (~240GB) is the new SSD, correct?
 
T2098 said:
Which cloning software did you use? I use Acronis TrueImage for WD all the time on my drives, and it's normally just as simple as firing the software up, clicking the clone button, shutting down, removing the old drive, and making sure the BIOS/UEFI is set to boot from the new one.

Some BIOS/UEFIs can be a bit obtuse in these situations, and won't automatically add a new boot device to the boot order, even if the one and only one that was active previously was removed.

I'm assuming disk 0 (1TB) is the old HDD and Disk 1 (~240GB) is the new SSD, correct?
Click to expand...
Correct and macrium. Been doing some googling and macrium's boot stick recovery/repair thing seems to be good at this stuff, was gonna make one and see what it can do.
 
try

1. remove the HDD
2. boot to windows 10 USB installer
3. do automatic repair with the startup repair (the repair button is usually VERY SMALL in the installer window)

if step 3 cant be done, manually add the BCD boot entry thing.

EDIT:
make sure to pray to whatever deity, to be shielded from my usual electronics misfortunes infecting you by following my instructions.
 
Sidenote: my wife has today and tomorrow off so she's chilling and I ain't gonna try anything until this weekend when she works and I'll have a solid block of time to play with it without pissing her off by having her PC down...even though she has a laptop too now that's actually nicer than her PC in everyway except monitor and speakers.

Thanks all though, I've been half-assed trying to fix it for at least a year now and within a day of posting for help not only do I have some very real possible solutions but it's also given me the hope/motivation to do it.

Thanks, big love! :love:
 
digitalwanderer said:
I think you're right I just have no clue anymore how to access/modify the bootloader. :(
Click to expand...
There are some good articles on the internet about how to rebuild your bootloader if that is the problem ... they will describe how to access and modify.
I think I did it a while ago for a GPT partition. Just make sure you know whether the partition is MBR or GPT (GPT can have multiple bootloaders).

If the boot loader is corrupted, how can I repair my Windows 10 OS?

www.kapilarya.com

[FIX] Windows 10 Master Boot Record Is Corrupted

This article will show you the way to repair Windows 10 Master Boot Record (MBR) when it is corrupted or inaccessible and your system cannot boot at all.
www.kapilarya.com www.kapilarya.com

 
Last edited:
orangpelupa said:
follow my 3 steps above. windows installer repair function should automatically detect the windows and create bootloader. you may also need to create around 200MB new partition if the auto stuff fails
Click to expand...
This is correct. I've done this before on accident. It should be fixable by removing the HDD and repairing the Windows installation by booting from a Windows media. Like orangelupa said, make sure there is enough free unallocated space on the drive to accomodate and new EFI partition or auto may fail. Hopefully you can shrink the primary partition by ~250MB from within Windows if necessary.

First thing make sure bitlocker is off and disconnect the HDD. Also none of this applies if you have legacy BIOS with an MBR disk :)

You can manually fix it if auto doesn't work but you still need boot media.

The first thing I would try manually is:
bootrec /rebuildbcd
bootrec /fixboot

Then try :
www.lifewire.com

How to Rebuild Windows Boot Configuration Data (BCD)

A complete tutorial on rebuilding the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, or Vista. The bootrec command is used for this task.
www.lifewire.com www.lifewire.com
Please make sure bitlocker is not on when you do any of this.

If that doesn't work you can delete the EFI partition and create a new one. I've had to do this 1 time in my life. Be careful not to delete your Windows partition, the drive letters may not be the same as what you're used to. Look in diskpart and figure out what the drive letters are before deleting anything:
www.partitionwizard.com

A Full Guide to Create EFI Partition Windows 10/11

Can you create EFI partition diskpart? Now, you come to the right place. This post provides a full guide to show you how to create EFI partition Windows 10/11.
www.partitionwizard.com www.partitionwizard.com
 
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its so annoying if you install windows with more than 1 drive in the system, windows can sometimes make the good decision to put bootloader or other things on another drive than the one you install on

thanks windows
 
sometimes especially upon booting I can hear my hdd spin up even though it only contains games I have windows on a nvme drive but windows labels the populated sata drives first then the nvme drives so the hdd is labelled as disk 0 and the windows drive as disk 4 in disk management. I think that's why it keeps spinning up
 
Finally playing with it. Had to clean the bejesus out of it first and add a new boot beep speaker, (I HATE it when PCs don't have one/they don't work), then did the disconnect the harddrive and reboot to a recovery USB. From there I tried start up repair but after a bit it said it was impossible so I went to the command prompt option and did this:

1721577385146.png

Gonna go read some of the articles y'all linked but thought it also wise to post this here. ;)
 
Did bootrec /fixmbr and it worked fine. Tried /fixboot and it denied me access.


I didn't do anything with bitlocker I just realized. Is that on by default and that's what's screwing me up?
 
Not a bitlocker issue I think. Typed "manage-bde -status" and got back a no disk volumes that can be protected with bitlocker.

Hrm.
 
digitalwanderer said:
Did bootrec /fixmbr and it worked fine. Tried /fixboot and it denied me access.


I didn't do anything with bitlocker I just realized. Is that on by default and that's what's screwing me up?
Click to expand...
Just to be sure, your Windows drive is GPT right? Maybe double check and make sure it's not MBR. You can see in diskpart or in Windows disk management, right click the drive, go to Properties and the Volumes. If it's MBR then your cloning software has failed you miserably. I stopped using Acronis because of this problem and started using Macrium Reflect which will use the same kind of partition table on the target drive as the source.

Assuming it's GPT this should be covered in step 7 here.
www.lifewire.com

How to Rebuild Windows Boot Configuration Data (BCD)

A complete tutorial on rebuilding the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, or Vista. The bootrec command is used for this task.
www.lifewire.com www.lifewire.com

attrib c:\boot\bcd -h -r -s

Not sure if c will be the correct volume (EFI volume) on your system but I think in the recovery environment that is usually the case. You can confirm that in diskpart (remember the drive letters you see in Windows are irrelevant in the recovery environment). Just make sure the HDD is not connected.

If it still doesn't work try creating a new EFI partition.
www.partitionwizard.com

A Full Guide to Create EFI Partition Windows 10/11

Can you create EFI partition diskpart? Now, you come to the right place. This post provides a full guide to show you how to create EFI partition Windows 10/11.
www.partitionwizard.com www.partitionwizard.com

Oh if your disk is MBR I'll have to think about how that could be resolved. There is a tool in Windows called mbr2gpt and maybe that would work but it could also fuck you up.
 
Last edited:
Just followed the guide here on how to get around "access denied" when I try /fixboot and failed horribly. Wasn't sure which to do so I did the little empty one first which failed then I tried the next with a different letter and failed. Decided to hook the HDD up and just boot into windows but not only won't it boot with the HDD connected it won't even boot to the USB with it hooked up.

Getting ready to panic and do a reinstall saving data, I'm just out of ideas.
 
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